NewTools is a Desk Accessory meant for use in GeoPaint. While it can be run from other applications, it will serve no useful purpose in them, at best, and may crash.
Running it from DARunner works. Running it from the geoWizard DA routine doesn't.
Finally, this was written and tested on a C64. It should also work fine on a 128 in 40 columns. I have no idea what it will do in 80 columns, but don't get your hopes up.
Introduction:
NewTools is a set of 16 graphic manipulation tools to be used from within geoPaint. There are four basic manipulation types, each with four directions:
1) Skewing, where rows of pixels are shifted one pixel right or left, starting from the top or the bottom of the graphic.
2) Arrow, where the graphic is made into an arrow shape (kinda) left, right, up or down.
3) Slanting, where columns of pixels are shifted one pixel up or down, starting from the left or the right of the graphic.
4) Rotating 45 Degrees, where the graphic is rotated up-left, up-right, down-left or down-right. The graphic pivots on the opposite corner. IE up-left pivots from the upper, right corner. Rotating has a bizarre effect on the graphic: it tends to make it twice as big and half as dense. I had neither the energy or the inclination to develop a smoothing routine for this. Maybe future versions.
You should print out the NewTools demo geoPaint file to get a better idea of what each of these do.
Make It Go:
Plan ahead and play around with NewTools to get an idea of what it can do and what its limitations are.
Create whatever graphic you want to word with, either some text, or a picture, or whatever. Your only limitation here is that you don't use the first two or three lines at the top of the geoPaint work area; the NewTools cursor can not access the top tw or three rows.
Then go to the Geos menu and select New Tools.
Two things will happen right away:
The tool box on the left of the screen will change to the new toolbox;
The cursor will change to a crosshair.
You will also notice that you can not move the cursor off of the geoPaint work area. NewTools is waiting for you to select the area you wish to manipulate. Your first selection should be the upper left corner of the rectangular area you wish to select. Find that point, then click. Nothing will happen. Then find the lower right corner of the are and click again. (The area you selecte is always rectangular.)
Now something should happen. Your mouse picture will return to whatever it normaly is, and you are now restricted to the toolbox area.
At this point you may click on the icon that reflects the manipulation you wish to make. After you make your selection, your graphic will change according to your wishes, the cursor changes to a crosshair again and you are once again restricted to the work area.
A manipulation is NON-destructive of anything in its path. In
other words, if you skew something to the righ
other words, if you skew something to the right, it will layer itself over whatever is to the right of it, in the same way geoPaint pastes an object in the transparent mode.
The toolbox also has three other options:
1) CA--allows you to cancel the two position selections you just made. You may then go back and select again.
2) UN--allows you to undo the last manipulation done. So, lets say you skewed something to the right and don't like the results. Just click the mouse twice on the work area and click on UN. That will undo the skew.
3) DONE--sends you back to the normal geoPaint tools. Like UN, to do DONE just click the mouse twice anywhere on the work area.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS:
Once are done you will be returned to the geoPaint work screen. STOP!!!
STOP!!!
The change you made is NOT yet PERMANENT!!!
If you do not like the changes you made while using NewTools, select "recover" from the file menu NOW! Your screen will revert to what it looked like before you entered NewTools.
If you LIKE what you did, then you must make it permanent. You can do this just by changing anything on the screen. This can be as simple as using the pencil, making a dot, then undoing the dot. Or erasing something. Or just about anything.
HOWEVER, if you close, or quit or move the screen prior to doing the above, your efforts in NewTools WILL BE LOST!!! AND if I get one message from someone who says they keep losing the work they did in NewTools, I'm gonna scream!!!!
This Is Not A Perfect World:
So don't expect it to be. The things that NewTools do aren't do-able with the normal geoPaint routines. But like geoPaint itself, some graphic objects don't lend themselves to manipulation as well as others. Occasionaly oddities show up in the routines, so play around alot.
A Lie I Told:
When you are selecting your area to manipulate, your clicks can actually be on any corner of the area you wish to select as long as they are opposite corners. Your clicks don't
to be upper left and lower right.
Things To Play With:
The most useful routines are the skew and slant routines. Using them thoughtfully you can make some curving shapes, and do some neat perspective stuff.
Take a look at some of the things on the demo geoPaint file to get an idea of what you can do. Some of the things look better on the screen than they do printed out; some look beter printed out. So much for WYSIWYG. ;)
In the lower left corner of the demo you will see the names of three people who provided ideas and inspiration for this:
BobbyD16
GeoRep Jim (Gentleman Jim C.)
Sorry I couldn't figure out the arches. Maybe MoreNewTools will have it.
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